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Friday, August 27, 2010

baptismal dates and marriage dates

¡Hola Familia!

It has been a really different week. Nothing much happened because we had multizone meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon. Salt Lake started a new program for missionaries to help us teach the doctrine of Christ. There are 8 lessons and so we went to the meetings and reviewed all 8 lessons. I really enjoy it except for the point when we do practices. I have never been a huge fan of practices even since the MTC. I don´t know, I have a hard time pretending that other missionaries are investigators but yet I know that there is true benefit in practicing.

So we are having 2 baptisms tomorrow. They are the kids of familia Gutierrez. Jorge is 17 and Antonio is 13. Antonio is super cool and he has his mind completely made up that he wants to be baptized. We are still nervous about Jorge because he is more rebellious but yet he has changed his life and he believes everything and wants to be a good person. The mom and her kids are from the campo and they came to live in the city with the mom´s companion. But they still don´t have much money but I just love the family. The mom still has a hard time with praying from the heart and not doing a recited prayer but the other day we told her we wanted her to pray and speak from the heart. So she started giving thanks for everything. She gave thanks for her cows and goats in the country and then all of us started giggling but we kept it in pretty well. They are such a humble family. They are also very white too. It is strange because Jorge is tall and white and he looks like he is from the states and so it is really strange to talk to him in Spanish. There is also an Elder in our zone who is from Costa Rica who is white with blond hair and blue eyes and he can't speak any English but I like to bug him and talk to him in English as if he could carry on a conversation.

So we still have another baptismal date with Luis (17 years old and the brother of Alejandro and David that were baptized in July). But he didn´t go to church so we had to change his baptismal date. So we hadn´t seen him for a couple days after he didn´t come to church and we just wanted to talk to him and see if he really wanted to get baptized or was just saying okay because we were there asking him. So, finally we found him in his house and Hermana Woods and I pulled him to the side. Then Hermana Woods said, ¨Luis, realmente, en verdad, ¿Usted quiere casarse?¨ So she just said, ¨Luis, really truly, do you want to get married?¨ I busted up laughing. Luis did too so it was all okay. And Hermana Woods laughed too. It kind of broke the ice and then we ask the really question if he wanted to get baptized. So I think that I might have to keep my eye on my companion and all those latino men:) But Luis said that he really does want to get baptized and he believes in the Book of Mormon and believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet. So he is going to get baptized in September.

Nothing much more has happened. We are happy to be here. I love my companion and we get along great and we have a great time together. We feel really blessed. I don´t know if I have ever told you this but President Lopez told us that Las Palmeras is one of the hardest areas in the mission. Before he has had the assistants in this area and zone leaders and he said that most brave have cried to him more than once because they were in this area. So, we are just counting our blessings. I know that it isn´t anything I have done personally but the Lord is blessing this ward with some success. In all of 2009 they had 10 baptisms and we already have 15 and with the other sisters in the ward, we have 4 baptism dates. So, we are going to double the baptisms they had all of last year. But I really love it here and I am learning to love the people.

Here is a weird note: the meetings we had were with almost half of the mission. There were 8 sisters and after Hermana Cash (who has 13 months on the mission), Me and Hermana Karl were the next ones with the most time on the mission (with 9 months). How weird is that. There aren´t very many old sisters in the mission now, just new ones. Crazy. I still feel like I left the MTC yesterday I am thinking I might feel that way for the rest of the mission.